ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Don’t Bet on Either Card Club Measure

Voters in Cypress and Stanton would be wise to reject proposals for card clubs in their cities that are on today’s ballot. Voters must understand the risk of trying to raise tax revenue with clubs that sometimes bring crime and corruption that place a major burden on police.

Both issues are labeled Measure A, but they differ in details.

The Cypress proposal calls for building a card club at Los Alamitos Race Course. The track owners are the primary backers and bankrollers of the plan, which they claim would result in a $30-million casino and entertainment complex that would generate 2,500 jobs and more than $10 million a year for the city. That’s a well-baited hook in these economic hard times.

The backers also promise to set up a $1-million scholarship fund for students. That’s more bait. But the proposal should be rejected.

In Stanton, voters are not picking a site, just whether they want a club. But visions abound. The owner of an indoor swap meet on Beach Boulevard says his building would make a lovely card club, one that would bring the city $3 million a year.

Backers of a Stanton club are outspending their opponents by almost 3 to 1: $60,000 to $23,000. The numbers in Cypress are even more staggering. Proponents there have spent more than $200 for each dollar that opponents have shelled out: $500,000 to $21,000. That half a million dollars works out to $111 for each of the city’s 45,000 residents.

Troubling questions about the finances of promoters of the Cypress card club plan have been detailed in The Times. A development company that is partly owned by two of the promoters owes Orange County $260,000 in delinquent property taxes on land surrounding the race course.

The company also failed to repay a $222,000 note that came due in February from a Long Beach church involved in a land deal.

Missing payments on taxes and loans should raise concerns among voters about how the Cypress card club would be managed and how likely the city would be to receive the promised millions.

Another question, for both Cypress and Stanton, is how much it would cost to pay for police to cope with the influx of gamblers and those who prey on them inside and outside the casinos. The county’s district attorney and police chiefs are opposed to the two clubs, warning of possible corruption of elected officials as well as inroads by organized crime.

And Westminster Councilman Tony Lam, a Vietnamese-American, said that Asians are especially drawn to high-stakes gambling and that clubs would harm many Asian-American families. Westminster’s City Council rejected a proposal to legalize gambling last March. Voters in Cypress and Stanton should oppose the clubs today. As the district attorney has said, they’re a bad bet.